Sony Playstation 5 Updates: Price, Release Date Revealed; Pre-Orders Now Open

Sony finally ended months of speculation surrounding its next-gen console by announcing the official price and release date of the PlayStation 5 during its showcase event.

The standard version of the PS5 will be priced at $499.99 while the PS5 Digital Edition, without an optical disc drive, is going to cost $399.99. The launch date has been confirmed for Nov. 12. The PlayStation 5 Showcase live stream delivered the news to a global gaming audience, Polygon reports.

That Nov. 12 release date is for the PlayStation 5 launches in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. As for the rest of the world, they’ll just have to wait a week to start bringing their PS5s home on Nov. 19.

Regional pricing is €499.99 in Europe, 49,980 yen in Japan, and £449.99 in the U.K. for the standard edition; the Digital Edition will cost €399.99 in Europe, 39,980 yen in Japan, and £349.99 in the U.K.

Approximately a week after Microsoft dropped their own news of a Nov. 10 launch for the Xbox Series X and the discless Xbox Series S, Sony responded in kind. The Xbox Series X is similarly priced at $499.99 while the Xbox Series S, which will not have graphics in 4K among other differences, will be sold at $299.99.

Compared to previous generations, Sony launched the current-gen PlayStation 4 in 2013 for the price of $399.99. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 3 had models priced at $499.99 and $599.99 at launch, a tough pill to swallow for gamers back during its 2006 launch.

Sony launched the original PlayStation in 1994 and the PlayStation 2 in 2000. Both were priced at $299.99 during their respective releases.

Sony has been painstakingly rolling out details about the PS5 since the console was first confirmed in April 2019. The announcement of the DualSense controller replacing the DualShock 4, the actual look of the console, the PlayStation 5 box art, as well as a list of first-party and third-party games coming to the PlayStation 5 were released to whet the collective appetites of gamers.

Pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 have already begun at some retailers including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and GameStop.